


when is a monster not a monster?

by wintercaps



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-16 11:22:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercaps/pseuds/wintercaps
Summary: when is a monster not a monster?oh, when you love it.— caitlyn siehlin which bucky adjusts, and begins to heal.





	when is a monster not a monster?

**Author's Note:**

> very much unbeta'd, but this has been sitting in my drafts since forever so i figured i may as well post it and get it out there!

**_i_**

_“The sun inside of him_  
_rages like wildfire_  
_and he is_  
_gold_  
_gold_  
_gold_  
_and he is_  
_scorching the skin of my heart,_  
_yet he still pretends_  
_that he is safe for me to love,_  
_that his hands are gentle,_  
_that his fingerprints won’t be  
_ _seared into the notches of my spine._

 _The sun inside of him_  
_could set kingdoms ablaze;  
__he knows this, he does._  

 _And he still asks me to love him,  
__to face the flame._  

_Find me in the ashes.”_

_—[Emily Palermo](http://starredsoul.tumblr.com/post/90896232367/the-sun-inside-of-him-rages-like-wildfire-and-he)_

 

_—_

 

The Asset is cold. The Asset is the cold barrel of a gun, the icy bite of hours spent crouched in wait with a rifle trained on a target, the numbness of wounded limbs and the agonizing, crawling suffocation of the chamber. It — _he_ (he still has to remind himself that he is no longer an it; no longer a weapon) — had long since forgotten what it meant to be anything other than freezing.

The Asset is so cold, and Steven Grant Rogers (Codename : Captain America) is so, so _warm_ that it aches. He is perfectly whitened smiles and hair like woven gold and sometimes, the Asset almost doesn’t believe that he is real. How could someone so breathtakingly wonderful possibly exist in a world so cruel? At times, the Asset finds himself utterly convinced that his world is nothing more than a hallucination as HYDRA puts him under again, or perhaps another tactic for HYDRA to control and subdue him. He finds himself constantly on edge, waiting to be torn out of this impossible happiness and find himself strapped down back on that table.

Steven Grant Rogers (Codename : Captain America) smiles sweeter than spun sugar and laughs with a voice like honey and looks at the Asset with eyes bluer than the Caribbean sea (the Asset had been sent on a mission there once, year indeterminate, with a mission objective of killing a young woman with one of the nicest smiles he’d ever seen in any way necessary. He hadn’t been told her name or why she was a HYDRA target — all that he knew was that she was his mission, and that he always carried out his missions flawlessly).

Steven Grant Rogers (Codename : Captain America) says “Bucky” in a voice so warm that it makes the Asset feel as though more than seventy years worth of ice is finally beginning to thaw from around his heart. And that’s the real kicker, isn’t it — the fact that he _has_ a heart. He has a heart, and a heartbeat, and thoughts and feelings and emotions, and Steven Grant Rogers (Codename : Captain America) never once punishes him for them.

The Asset is learning. Learning to respond to “Bucky”, learning that the world is both a kinder and much more cruel place than it had once been, learning that he can say _no_ and _I’d rather that one instead_ and Steven Grant Rogers takes all of it in stride. He calls Steven Grant Rogers “punk” once, because for some reason it feels _right_ , and all of his muscles brace and the plates in his metal arm shift in response to the incoming punishment for speaking out of turn. Instead, all that he gets it a surprised laugh and a fond “jerk” and Steven Grant Rogers looking at him like he is worth something.

Steven Grant Rogers (the Asset calls him this once and gets a wince in response and a “just Steve, Bucky.” and the Asset is trying to remember that Steven Grant Rogers is just Steve and Samuel Thomas Wilson is just Sam and there are so many names and codenames all jumbled up inside the Asset’s mind but he is _trying_ ) elbows the Asset — Bucky; if Steven Grant Rogers is Steve then the Asset can be Bucky — in the ribs and tousles his hair and punches his arm, and he does all of it with a smile

Slowly, the Asset — Bucky, he is _allowed_ to be Bucky — learns that Steve is more than the warmth of a summer day. He is the warmth of a flame, warming the Asset’s — Bucky’s — frostbitten fingers and shaking hands and trembling voice and iced-over heart and returning him, piece by piece, to the man that he used to be. Steve is the warmth of winters spent huddled on a small bed with several blankets piled on top of them, holding his shivering best friend in his arms, telling himself that it’s just to keep the cold out, nothing more. Steve is the sweltering heat of days spent on the fire escape outside their apartment, smoking one of his last few cigarettes while Steve not-so-subtly sketches him. Steve is the warmth of them huddled around a campfire with the rest of the Commandos, sitting a little closer than necessary, shoulders brushing and thighs pressed together, in the middle of nowhere, fighting literal _Nazis_ , feeling happier than he will for decades to come. Steve is warmth and heat and he is absolutely destroying Bucky in the most wonderful, painful of ways.

Steve is comforting in a way that reminds Bucky of a home that he doesn’t fully remember. Bucky thinks that Steve himself may be home.

And Bucky thinks that he may be dying. Steve smiles at him, and presses his hand into Bucky’s lower back, and their hands brush when they walk together, and all of it is burning Bucky up from the inside, but it’s okay — he doesn’t mind being consumed by fire if Steve is the one setting him ablaze.

**_ii_ **

_"you never knew_  
_the stars had a flavor  
_ _until you kissed him._

 _it turns out_  
_they taste like ambition and ancient fire_  
_desperation and self-destruction_  
_determination and dark matter_  
_and the mind-numbing fear_  
_of being left_  
_alone  
__again_  

_(he’s not alone anymore)"_

 

_—_

 

The first time Steve kisses him, everything goes quiet. Even the best of Bucky’s days are filled with a near constant stream of information about his current location, most convenient exits, potential weapons, waiting for his next set of instructions from HYDRA even when he knows, after all this time, that they aren’t coming.

Steve kisses him and all of that just — stops. All that Bucky can think about is Steve’s hands (one on his waist, fingers curled just slightly into his shirt; the other soft and sweet at his jaw) and Steve’s mouth (so soft, Bucky wants to spend the rest of his life kissing Steve Rogers, oh God please let him spend the rest of his life kissing Steve Rogers—) and Steve’s stupidly long eyelashes brushing against Bucky’s cheekbone when he uses the hand on his jaw to adjust the angle and oh, everything is warm and soft and _perfect_ and _warm._

Bucky draws Steve back in for another kiss before either of them get the chance to properly catch their breath, and another, and another, until Steve’s eyes are dark under the shadow of his lashes and the most gorgeous splotches of red have risen high on his cheeks. Steve is the artist between the two of them, but Bucky finds himself wishing that he could draw just so that he could capture this moment forever, of Steve looking so sweet and adoring.

He presses in as close as he can, into the warmth of Steve’s shoulder, whispers the sweetest words into the flesh there. _I love you_ and _you’re my everything_ and _the prettiest person I’ve ever seen_ and _I’m never leaving you again_ all have Steve melting, and for once it feels almost fitting, that Bucky is finally doing something that has Steve turning into a warm puddle instead of it being the other way around.

They end up in their bed somehow — _their_ bed, oh god how is Bucky so unbelievably lucky, he’s in the 21st century with the man he loves and he’s _allowed_ to love him and they share a _bed_ — and spend minutes, hours, possibly centuries in each other’s arms.

Steve Rogers kisses frantically, like the world is ending.

Steve Rogers kisses sweetly, like Bucky is the most precious thing in existence.

Steve Rogers kisses slowly, like he finally has everything he could ever want right there in his arms. 

Bucky slides a hand into Steve’s hair; _you_ are _my world._

Bucky brushes their tongues together; _you’re so precious to me that sometimes I’m not sure that you’re real._

Bucky steals the breath right out of Steve’s mouth; _you are all I have ever wanted and all that I will ever want._

The desperate tension leaves Steve’s muscles slowly, until their room is bathed in the darkness of the outside world, and Steve is like putty in Bucky’s arms.

Steve reminds Bucky so often of the sun, with his golden hair and sunkissed skin. Bucky sees a different version of Steve that night, bathed in the moonlight pouring through their windows. The moonlight turns his hair into pure liquid silver, lashes casting deep shadows on his cheeks, soft freckles standing out against the bridge of his nose more than they ever have during the day. 

Steve is the sun, and Steve is the moon, and Steve is Bucky’s entire universe.

**_iii_ **

_"you are not the heaviness sitting inside of you._  
_you are not the battlefield where the bodies fall,_  
_and you are not the sound of cannons_  
_breaking the sky open.  
__you are what happens after the war._  

_the surviving._

_the healing._

_the rebuilding."_

_—[y.z](http://starredsoul.tumblr.com/post/90896232367/the-sun-inside-of-him-rages-like-wildfire-and-he)_

_—_

Bucky remembers being cold. He remembers the agonizing chill of being frozen to death, again and again and again. He also remembers the agonizing _burn_ of being woken up, feeling as though all of his flesh was being slowly flayed from his body as he thawed out. Loving Steve is something like that burn. Bucky holds on to that heat, that overwhelming pain, and tells himself day in and day out that _if I can feel this it means that I’m not back there with them. I am not frozen. I am not a weapon._

Bucky wakes the both of them up in the middle of the night often enough for it to be a regular occurrence. Some nights he comes to struggling for air, others shaking so hard he feels as though he is trying to vibrate right out of his own skin, others physically throwing himself over the side of the bed as he gags and empties out his stomach of everything that he’d eaten that day. 

Steve never knows what to do when Bucky ends up like that. It was always Bucky taking care of Steve, back when they were kids, wrapping him up to keep him warm and bringing him Sarah’s soup when he fell sick and laughing even as he bandaged up both of their bruised and bloodied knuckles from another round of rough-housing after a useless argument. Now, Steve just hovers around restlessly while Bucky tries his best not to dirty their freshly-cleaned floorboards for the third night in a row. 

Eventually, Steve wanders out to call Sam — Bucky can hear Sam’s tired “Steve, it’s literally 3am, the world better be in flames or I swear to god” over his own gagging — and comes back into their room with a cool glass of water and a small plate with a banana cut into exactly twelve perfectly even sized slices, shoulders set firmly. 

The first time it happens, Bucky laughs hard enough that he _does_ end up dirtying their floorboards.

—

Bucky is allowed to be a person with wants and needs. He has to remind himself of this fact just as often as he has to remind himself that he _is_ a person. There are days where he shuts down entirely and his world narrows to a panicked _non-essential to mission completion_ when he sees the soft bed he sleeps on, and the too-sweet cereal that he and Steve picked together, and even the damn bathroom, with its pristine tiled walls.

Those days, he forgets how to be Bucky. He forgets how to be a person at all. He becomes the Asset again; a weapon. He doesn’t like being a weapon. He doesn’t like being an _it_ . He doesn’t like the way his mind screams at him that he’s been out too long, that he has to debrief, that he’s going to be _punished_ for disobeying. Bucky really doesn’t like those days. 

Possibly the worst part is that Bucky _isn’t_ a weapon, despite how much he feels like one. He isn’t a soldier, or a hero, or anyone of status. When he finds himself turning into a machine again, the world becoming a series of tasks, he is left with nothing and no one.

Steve is still Captain America. Steve still has to go out and save the world on a regular basis. Bucky is left feeling more and more like a machine each time Steve leaves their apartment with a kiss and a firm “I’ll be back soon.” even as he adjusts his shield and checks his firearms once, twice, thrice, in a ritual that he never breaks.

The world _needs_ Steve but Bucky _needs_ Steve as well. Needs him to be able to stay a person, to stay thawed out, to stay Bucky. Bucky understands that the world needs Steve but he needs Steve _more_ , so surely— 

He never lets himself think further than that. 

Bucky mentions it to Sam, once, when Steve is gone on another mission that would keep him away for three days, at the absolute least. Sam is nice — Bucky likes Sam. He’s funny, and nice, but shoves back when Bucky pushes his luck with stupid joke after stupid joke.

“Yeah, man, it’s hard without him around.” Sam agrees, splayed out casually on their lounge like it belongs to him. Bucky likes the fact that Sam feels comfortable enough in his and Steve’s apartment that he feels that way. “Especially when he’s gone for, like, any extended period of time. He can be an asshole but that’s just part of his charm, you know? And he never really does it to be mean or anything. He’s real good at making people feel human.”

And Bucky says, “I only feel human when he’s around.” and Sam pauses the TV (they were watching an episode of _How It’s Made)_ and asks “what do you mean?” and Bucky tells him — not everything, but enough. A lot more than he’s told anyone in a long time.

Bucky grips one of the couch cushions tight enough that it tears in his hand — the left one, _of course it’s the left one —_ while he talks, and it’s only once he manages to stop talking that he realizes he’s done so. He has to flee to the bathroom so he doesn’t ruin their floorboards again. _Like you ruin everything_ , his mind whispers. _Shut the fuck up,_ he yells back to that stupid voice.

Sam doesn’t mention his meltdown when he comes back out to the living room, and they finish watching an episode about the creation process of bicycle seats.

After that, Sam shows up more often. Weekends, random nights throughout the week, in the mornings with Steve when they come back from their morning run together (Steve always looks completely composed, if slightly out of breath, as Sam struggles for air and complains about how he’s literally _dripping_ sweat). He invites Bucky out for coffee, and for strolls around the park, and once mentions his Veterans Affairs group. Bucky gives a firm _no fucking way_ to that last one and Sam never asks again.

Bucky’s bad days still greatly outnumber his good ones, but even he can see that he is making progress.

— 

Bucky remembers wanting a dog, Before. He’s taken to capitalizing certain words inside his head, because he knows that they hold more importance that way. 

He remembers that his family couldn’t afford a dog, back then, and he remembers how he used to crouch down outside rich folk’s front lawns to play with their dogs through their white picket fences.

Bucky finally mentions this to Steve one day, unsure whether it’s an actual memory or something that his mind has come up with to fill in the blanks of his life from Before. The fond smile that takes over Steve’s face confirms it as a real memory, and Steve spends the next hour talking about how Bucky had a favorite dog — a yappy little Pomeranian who Bucky affectionately named “Dunderhead” despite the tag on its collar clearly reading _Dunstan_ — and used to steal slabs of meat and handfuls of dog treats as a gift for Dunderhead as often as he would steal food for Steve and Sarah when money got extra tough. 

When Sam takes him to a dog park that next week, Bucky spends more time playing with all of the dogs than he does talking to Sam.

The first thing that he says that afternoon when he walks into their room to find Steve on his laptop, legs crossed and posture relaxed, is a firm “I want a dog.”

And Steve just looks up from whatever he was reading (because he was definitely reading something; Bucky remembers Steve excitedly waving his phone around back when Bucky had first been granted permission to live in the Tower, talking about _digital books_ and _all the words are right there Buck_ and _sometimes the future really does things right_ ) and smiles and says, “yeah, a dog would be great.” 

— 

Clint had been surprisingly helpful in their research for a dog. Steve had said “wait, wait — what’s the difference between a service dog and a therapy dog?” as he spotted for Bucky, which wasn’t really necessary, but it was the thought that counted.

“A lot, actually.” Clint had called out from the other side of the training room, before Bucky could answer.

“I’m deaf,” he’d explained, crouched on the floor, taping his knuckles in preparation to spar with Natasha, who was opting to go without. “Or, at least hard of hearing. I spent a long time researching service dogs for people with hearing disabilities. Life’s kind of busy when you’re a superhero, though, so I never ended up getting one. If you need to know anything, I still have heaps of links I could send you.”

And then he’d thrown himself into the fight and promptly gotten his ass beat by Natasha, who looked like she’d barely broken a sweat, while Clint wheezed for air through where she’d kneed him hard enough in the chest to send him to the other side of the mat. He was grinning, though, so Bucky guessed he must have enjoyed it to some degree.

Two months later, Bucky found himself at a local no-kill shelter with Steve, crouching in front of a golden retriever with big floppy ears and a wagging tail. The sheet of paper on the outside of his room (the staff had insisted on calling each animal’s cage a _room_ rather than a _cage_ and Bucky could see why — the place was wonderfully designed and clearly well taken care of) briefly described the dog as “fun-loving, always up for an adventure, loves sleeping, and very affectionate! Loves children and other animals!” and claimed that his name was _Milo._ Bucky was already thinking of alternative names.

By the time they were home, Bucky had decided on calling him Captain — mostly just because he was _that_ much of an asshole and was already enjoying the thought of the both of them coming running when he called them. Captain was only intended to be a therapy dog, since Bucky had decided that a service dog wasn’t quite what he needed.

Steve had sternly said _no dogs on the bed, Bucky_ and Bucky had promptly thrown himself onto their bed, cooing at Captain to jump up and join him. Even though he clearly didn’t know his name yet, he seemed to enjoy the way Bucky would excitedly pay the bed and cheer “up! C’mon, beautiful, up we get!”

Steve found them cuddled in the middle of their bed, sighed, and then squirmed onto the other side of Captain and managed to hug both him and Bucky at the same time.

—

“Captain!” Bucky throws a note of panicked desperation into his voice, grinning when Steve comes barreling into the living room a moment later, already armed, followed smoothly by Captain.

Steve lowers his gun as soon as he realises what’s happening. “Are you serious, Bucky? _Again?_ ”

Bucky laughs, delighted. His plan had gone as smoothly as it had every other time he’d shouted for his dog. He’d been sprawled out on the lounge, watching an episode of _America’s Next Top Model_ , when he’d gotten hit with the sudden urge to fuck with Steve.

“You’re the worst.” Steve says, stepping closer, putting his gun on the table beside the lounge. “The absolute worst. I’m breaking up with you right now.”

That just makes Bucky laugh again, cut off by an _oof_ when Steve drops his full weight onto his chest. 

Captain had already wandered off, bored when he realised that neither of them were going to pay attention to him. He was probably sleeping in the warm spot Steve had left on their bed when they both came running at Bucky's call.

“You know you love me.” Bucky grins as Steve wriggles around to get more comfortable, adjusting their limbs till he eventually settles with his face pressed into Bucky’s neck, one arm thrown up around Bucky’s left shoulder where it presses into the back of the couch with the other dangling off the edge, legs tangled.

“Yeah, I do. I really, really do.” 

“Wait, no.” 

“I love you _so_ much Bucky. I love you with my _entire_ heart.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Bucky squirms and presses at Steve’s face halfheartedly, unable to stop smiling. 

“You’re my best guy and I _love_ you. I _love love love_ you, Bucky. I love—”

“Stop!” Bucky laughs and ends up pulling Steve into a kiss that isn’t much of a kiss since they’re both grinning into it. They end up watching another episode of _America’s Next Top Model_ , and then a few episodes of _Say Yes To The Dress_ , because they both like yelling at the selfish parents or friends of the brides.

Bucky isn’t _recovered_ yet, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be fully _recovered,_ but he thinks he might be getting there.


End file.
